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Rainforest Cowboys The Rise of Ranching and Cattle
Culture in Western Amazonia 1st Edition Jeffrey Hoelle
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jeffrey Hoelle
ISBN(s): 9780292768154, 029276815X
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 20.52 MB
Year: 2015
Language: english
 R a in for est Cow boys

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THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 rainforest cowboys

The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture

in Western Amazonia

Jeffrey Hoelle

university of texas press Austin

Hoelle_5339-final.indb iii 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 This book is a part of the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture
publication initiative, funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation.

Copyright © 2015 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2015

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be

sent to:
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The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/
NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

L i br a ry of Congr ess C ata logi ng-i n-Pu bl ic at ion Data

Hoelle, Jeffrey, 1976–

Rainforest cowboys : the rise of ranching and cattle culture in western
Amazonia / Jeffrey Hoelle. — First Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-292-76134-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Beef cattle—Environmental aspects—Brazil—Acre. 2. Ranching—
Environmental aspects—Brazil—Acre. 3. Deforestation—Brazil—Acre.
4. Human ecology—Brazil—Acre. I. Title.
SF196.B6H64 2015
636.2′13098112—dc23 2014023106

doi:10.7560/761346

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 To my mot h er

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THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 Con ten ts

List of Illustrations viii

List of Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

Ch a p ter 1. The Journey to Acre 1

Ch a p ter 2. The Expansion of Cattle Raising in Acre 21

Ch a p ter 3. Ruminations on Cattle Economies and

Cattle Cultures 37

Ch a p ter 4. Ideologies of Nature and Human–Environment

Interactions 54

Ch a p ter 5. The Ranchers: Smooth Hands, Progress,

and Production 72

Ch a p ter 6. The City and the Contri 91

Ch a p ter 7. Here’s the Beef: Symbol, Sustenance, and

Hamburger Connections 111

Ch a p ter 8. Rubber-Tapper and Colonist Transitions:

Environment, Practice, and Identity 128

Ch a p ter 9. The Appropriation of Cattle Culture:

Perceptions, Behaviors, and Methodological Considerations 148

Ch a p ter 10. The Full Picture 162

Appendix A. Social Groups and Research Area 169

Appendix B. Methods and Data 171

Appendix C. Levels of Agreement among Social Groups 175

Works Cited 181

Index 193

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 Illustr ations

Figu r e 1.1. Map showing Acre, Brazil 2

Figu r e 1.2. Chico Mendes sign 3
Figu r e 1.3. “A portrait of Acre,” Varadouro magazine 7
Figu r e 1.4. Pistoleiro 9
Figu r e 1.5. Map of southern Acre 11
Figu r e 1.6. An Amazonian cauboi 15
Figu r e 2.1. Satellite image of research area 24
Figu r e 2.2. Rubber-tapper children 28
Figu r e 2.3. Colonist home 30
Figu r e 3.1. Tchoa the bull 38
Figu r e 3.2. The cavalgada, 2010 39
Figu r e 3.3. Bahiana, son, and an ox 47
Figu r e 4.1. Which is the most beautiful landscape? 60
Figu r e 4.2. Forest–house proximity graph 62
Figu r e 4.3. Landscape/character graph 64
Figu r e 4.4. Cowboy at sunset 65
Figu r e 5.1. Rancher observing a cowboy 78
Figu r e 6.1. Sorocaba at the Cowboys Ranch 93
Figu r e 6.2. View from Bahiana’s porch 103
Figu r e 6.3. Bahiana looks out her window 104
Figu r e 7.1. A rubber-tapper churrasco 112
Figu r e 7.2. McNaldão’s hamburger stand 121
Figu r e 8.1. Rubber in a Brazil nut shell 134
Figu r e 8.2. Leopoldo peels Brazil nuts 142
Figu r e 9.1. Competence range graph 153
Figu r e 9.2. Perception/participation graph 160
Figu r e A.1. Social group spatial relationships 170

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 Ta bles

Ta ble 2.1. Economic practices associated with socioeconomic

terms 32
Ta ble 5.1. Agreement with statements about ranchers 81
Ta ble 6.1. Agreement with statements about social aspirations 97
Ta ble 6.2. Reported use of contri clothing 99
Ta ble 7.1. Frequency of beef consumption 116
Ta ble 7.2. Quality of beef consumed 117
Ta ble 7.3. Agreement with statements about beef 122
Ta ble 8.1. Economic practices of social groups 131
Ta ble 8.2. Average herd size in Quixadá 144
Ta ble 9.1. Cattle-culture competence scores 152
Ta ble 9.2. Forest–home proximity 155
Ta ble 9.3. Work ideology 156
Ta ble 9.4. Participation in cattle culture 158
Ta ble C.1. Levels of agreement with selected statements 176
Ta ble C.2. Statements eliciting strong agreement 177
Ta ble C.3. Statements eliciting moderate agreement 178
Ta ble C.4. Statements eliciting little agreement 179

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THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 Ack now ledgmen ts

Th is book was concei v ed a n d w r it ten under the guidance

of many people, and it would not have come into being without their
support and perspective. Marianne Schmink, the chair of my disser-
tation committee, has been a source of inspiration and wisdom. In
Gainesville and Acre, she served as an example of dedication in her
various roles as mentor, scholar, and advocate. Brenda Chalfi n pro-
vided insights from political economy and helped me navigate the
Africanist literature to gain an understanding of the relationship be-
tween economy and culture from a comparative perspective. Stephen
Perz, a sociologist, was central to my development of a broader per-
spective on Acre, giving me an opportunity to participate as a mem-
ber of the field team conducting socioeconomic research during the
paving of the Inter-Oceanic Highway. Michael Heckenberger served
as a vital critical voice on the committee, and also provided inspira-
tion and practical advice on research and writing.
Other members of the University of Florida Department of An-
thropology were very influential in my development as a scholar. I
benefited from conversations with Anthony Oliver-Smith, Clarence
Gravlee, and Gerald Murray. H. Russell Bernard generously shared
his broad knowledge and experience within the field of anthropology,
and also provided valuable encouragement and critiques of my work.
I also benefited from the perspectives of Eduardo Brondizio, Richard
Pace, Jacqueline Vadjunec, William Baleé, and Ryan Adams. I appreci-
ate the support of my colleagues at UC-Denver, Sarah Horton, Marty
Otañez, Julien Riel-Salvatore, and Steve Koester, and then at UCSB,
Casey Walsh, Susan Stonich, Mary Hancock, Barbara Harthorn, Stu-
art Tyson-Smith, and David-Lopez Carr.
My involvement with the Center for Latin American Studies
and the Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) program re-
affirmed in me the belief that a multidisciplinary perspective is nec-
essary to understand human– environment topics. Charles Wood
helped me develop a solid research design that included quantitative
methods and a personal interest in the rich details of Brazilian so-
cial life. It was always good to talk with Jon Dain, who encouraged
my curiosity and inspired me with his energy in both Gainesville
and Acre. TCD alumni Valerio Gomes, Amy Duchelle, and Rich Wal-

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 xii acknowledgments

lace provided friendship, support, and insights in the field. My fellow

graduate students were a valuable source of inspiration, theorization,
and relaxation, particularly Becky Blanchard, Ryan Peseckas, Mason
Mathews, Ryan Morini, Mike Degani, Remington Flutarksi, Rafael
Mendoza, and Tim Podkul. Nick Kawa has been a constant source of
support. A sincere thanks as well to Jason Scott and Michael Knisley.
My research would have never materialized if not for the gener-
ous support of Acreans. Judson Valentim, the head of EMBRAPA-
Acre (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), provided an
expert perspective on Amazonian cattle ranching, as well as insti-
tutional support and unflagging encouragement for this research.
Jose Eduardo, his three sons, and Chico, all of whom are ranchers,
opened up their lives to me; with their friendship I was able to over-
come some of the barriers that naturally arise between Amazonian
ranchers and a perceived ecologista from the north, and gained valu-
able insight into their world. Although he did not have to be, A. D. V.,
the president of the Acrean Federation of Agriculture, was very help-
ful and honest with me.
I also benefited from the help of individuals at many governmen-
tal institutions in both Rio Branco and Brasiléia, including IDAF (In-
stitute for the Defense of Agro-Cattle Raising and the Environment),
INCRA (Brazilian Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform),
and SEAPROF (Secretariat for Agriculture and Family Production). At
the Federal University of Acre, Veronica Passos and Francisco Car-
los da Silveira Cavalcanti helped me navigate academic and logisti-
cal issues. Eduardo “Cazuza” Amaral Borges, of the Group for Agro-
Forestry Research of Acre (PESACRE), was always open to talking
with me, and helped me understand the complexity of Acre. Patri-
cia Grijo at the Fulbright Commission of Brazil was extremely help-
ful, and it was as a result of her flexibility that I was able to conduct
research in traditional cattle-raising centers outside of Acre. The as-
sociation of the residents of the CMER (Chico Mendes Extractive Re-
serve) area of Brasiléia (AMOREB), along with officials at IBAMA (In-
stitute of Biodiversity and the Environment), worked with me to gain
access to rubber-tapper communities.
In the rubber-tapper community of São Cristovão, I very much ap-
preciated the generosity and support of the following households: the
Marçals; Ze Coelho Wagner and Maria das Neves; and Pedro Perto
and Zefa. In the Quixadá Directed Settlement Project, Bahiana and
her sons, Ney and Celio, graciously hosted me and gave me a window

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 acknowledgments xiii

into their lives, as did Leopoldo, who lived on the other side of the
highway. I will always remember the generous support of numerous
rubber tappers and colonists whom I know only by their nicknames
or fi rst names: Tatu, João da Frontiera, Carreca, Fanhoso, Branco, Rai-
mundo Firme, and Gilberto in Quixadá; and Carlinhos, Leni and Fla-
vio, and Carlos in São Cristovão.
Joe, Jenny, and Annie Hoelle have patiently supported me in my
journeys. In addition to giving their love and encouragement, my
family provided the impetus for this research when they bought
some land and a few head of cattle about ten years ago. Growing up
in West Texas, and surrounded by a form of “cattle culture” that I
never thought to scrutinize, I became interested in the cultures that
surrounded cattle raising. My fate was sealed when I arrived at UF
and began to learn more about the Amazon and the importance of
cattle in debates about economic development and environmental
conservation.
It was due to this connection with home, and my mom’s suggestion
(insistence) that I share my research, that I began to write a column
entitled “Postcards from the Amazon” for my hometown newspaper.
Mike Kelly and Tim Archuleta at the San Angelo Standard-Times
helped make this happen, and guided me through the early transi-
tion to writing for the newspaper. I thank San Angeloans, and oth-
ers who read my articles online, for their interest and support, for
giving me the opportunity to refi ne my ethnographic writing skills,
and for helping me to not lose sight of how to communicate with
non-academics.
My wife, Shravanthi Reddy, has been a source of support and in-
spiration, and she has helped me become a better scholar and person.
With her engineer’s perspective, she always challenged me to make
my work clearer and helped me to understand the logic of scientific
inquiry. I also appreciate her understanding while I have been absent
for months at a time, and, even when present, somewhat obsessed
with cows. Thanks to baby Adhya, who, while extremely distracting,
has made my life richer and taught me lessons in time management.
T.R., Prasanna, and Divya Reddy provided me a hideout in their base-
ment and so much more in the months leading up to deadlines for
this book.
The American Anthropological Association granted me per-
mission to reprint versions of two papers: “Black Hats and Smooth
Hands: Social Class, Environmentalism, and Work among the Ranch-

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 xiv acknowledgments

ers of Acre, Brazil,” originally published in Anthropology of Work Re-

view 33 (2) (2012), and “Convergence on Cattle: Political Ecology, So-
cial Group Perceptions, and Socioeconomic Relationships in Acre,
Brazil,” Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment 33 (2) (2011).
I thank the editors, Michael Chibnik and Sarah Lyon at AWR and
Jeanne Simonelli and Stephanie Paladino at CAFE, as well as the
anonymous reviewers for their assistance in turning these disserta-
tion chapters into journal articles.
Theresa May is a straight shooter, and I feel fortunate that I was
able to work with her as editor-in-chief before she retired from UT
Press. Thanks to Casey Kittrell for helping me during the home
stretch.
Financial support for this research came from summer research
grants from the University of Florida Working Forests in the Trop-
ics (2007), and the Department of Anthropology Doughty Award for
Applied Research (2008). Fieldwork in 2007–2009 was supported in
part by participation in the NSF-HSD project “Infrastructure Change,
Human Agency, and Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems” (award
number: 0527511; Stephen Perz, Principal Investigator). My fi nal sea-
son of fieldwork (2010) was funded by a fellowship from the IIE Ful-
bright program.

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 R a in for est Cow boys

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THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 Ch a pter 1

the journey to acre

the signs

Brazilians have colorful ways of describing the Amazonian state of

Acre (fig. 1.1). Situated on the border with Peru and Bolivia in the
far western corner of Brazil, Acre is so “out there” in the national
imagination that it is referred to as the place “where the wind turns
around” and “where Judas lost his boots.” In the megacities of São
Paulo and Rio, they told me, “O Acre não existe” (Acre does not ex-
ist). Acreans sometimes even mumble this to themselves, with a
sigh. Those who can imagine Acre see in their minds the primordial
forest and Indios, but also the settlers, loggers, miners, and ranchers
of the Velho Oeste (Old West) shooting it out for resources and land.
For most people, though, this remote corner of Amazonia is known
for the man who put it on the map, nationally and internationally:
Acre is the “Land of Chico Mendes.”
When I fi rst arrived in Rio Branco, Acre, in 2007, the billboards
showing Chico Mendes were still fresh and new. I recognized the face
of the rubber-tapper leader from the movies and books that told of the
tappers’ fight to defend their rainforest homes against invading cat-
tle ranchers in the 1970s and 1980s. Amid international news images
of trailing black smoke clouds and white cattle grazing among the
charred skeletons of the forest, Mendes argued for a new alternative:
people could live off the forest without destroying it.
I returned every year for the next three years, and each time I no-
ticed that the signs were a little more faded and tattered, with older
advertisements peeking through Mendes’s mustachioed face and the
forest behind him. By 2010, many had been painted over by ads for
fashion stores, cell phone carriers, and English schools, but I could

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 1 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 2 rainforest cowboys

figure 1.1. Map showing Acre, Brazil

still fi nd two around town. One was alongside the Parque da Ma-
ternidade (Motherhood Park) (fig. 1.2), and the second was on a dou-
ble-decker signpost by the side of the BR-364 highway in front of the
Federal University of Acre: Mendes was on the upper sign, and on
the lower a talking hamburger with skinny arms and legs beckoned
Acreans to come to one of many lanchonetes, or hamburger stands,
in town. When I came back to this part of the city a few weeks
later to take a picture of the contrasting signs, they had both been
painted over.
The signs pointed to the emerging contradictions of a political pro-
gram and a global vision for sustainable development built on the
legend of Chico Mendes and the rubber-tapper movement. My intro-
duction to Acre took place during a time of social, political, and eco-

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 2 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 the journey to acre 3

nomic transition in Acre and throughout Amazonia. From 1990 to

2003, Amazonian cattle production increased at ten times the rate
of the rest of the country (Arima et al. 2006), propelling Brazil to the
top of the list of beef exporters in 2004. From 1998 to 2008, the count
of cattle in Acre itself increased by over 400 percent, the greatest in-
crease in all of Brazil (IBGE 2008). Much of this growth came among
smallholder groups with no previous history of raising cattle, includ-
ing the rubber tappers (Gomes 2009; Toni et al. 2007).
Everything that I read on the topic (e.g., Hecht 1993; Margu-
lis 2004; Arima et al. 2006) highlighted the subsidies and incen-
tives that made cattle more valuable than the standing forest. Lit-
tle was being written about the cultural beliefs and practices that
surrounded cattle raising in other parts of the world, such as the
“cattle complex” (Herskovits 1926) and the “bovine idiom” (Evans-
Pritchard 1944) of East African pastoralists and the “sacred cow” of
India (Harris 1966). A legacy of anthropological research illustrated
the deeply held beliefs, rituals, and behaviors arising from the hu-
man– cattle relationship, but in Amazonia cattle seemed to be per-
ceived as little more than drivers of deforestation or the result of poli-

figure 1.2. “Chico Mendes lives!,” Rio Branco, Acre

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 3 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 4 rainforest cowboys

cies and prices. To expand this view, I attempted to “look to the cow,”
as Evans-Pritchard had done among the Nuer, studying cattle as both
economic resources and highly meaningful cultural objects.
To my surprise, I soon met self-proclaimed caubois (cowboys)
living the vida contri (country life). I encountered a dedicated seg-
ment of the population, including former rubber tappers, who boasted
large, shiny belt buckles, tight blue jeans, and a preference for “clean”
pasture over the forest. I saw just how widespread cattle had become
since the opening of the Acrean frontier to colonization and “de-
velopment” some forty years ago: the ranchers’ prize bulls lazed in
manicured pastures, while children rode their steers to school along
rubber trails deep in the forest. There was ample evidence that the
growth of cattle raising had been accompanied by a “cattle culture,”
a cattle-centered vision of rural life that was increasingly celebrated,
in both the countryside, where cow-less cowboys rode bulls in the
weekend rodeios (rodeos), and the city, where lifetime urbanites and
those displaced from the forest danced to contri music lamenting the
idyllic rural life that lay somewhere between the city and the forest.
From the fields to the bucking bull under the cauboi and the
leather boots on his feet to the centerpiece of the churrasco (barbe-
cue), everything that I saw over the course of eighteen months of
fieldwork indicated that cattle were cultural and economic objects
with local and broader meanings that were both embraced and am-
bivalently viewed throughout Acrean society. In a setting histori-
cally, politically, and symbolically linked to the forest, it was not just
the “eco-villain” ranchers, murderous pistoleiros (hired gunmen), or
deforesters born with chainsaw in hand who were participating in
this cattle culture. In fact, cattle culture was in many ways becoming
inseparable from Acrean culture, revealing contradictions and fertile
sites for analysis with a complex host of characters, including “car-
nivorous” environmentalists, small-scale cattle raisers who named
and refused to eat their oxen, caubois de vitrine (“shop window”/ur-
ban cowboys) who owned neither cattle nor land, and members of the
forest government riding their horses with forty thousand other Acre-
ans down the Via Chico Mendes in the annual cavalgada (cavalcade).
To understand the appeal of cattle raising I looked to the figure of
the cow in all of these situations, analyzed it from a number of angles
using qualitative and quantitative methods, and then attempted to
reassemble its components to enable myself to better understand the
overall picture. I used a framework that emphasized the dialectical

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 4 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 the journey to acre 5

relationship between what people do and what they think, and how
both are constrained by structures and reflected in material world in
the form of landscapes. I thus analyzed cattle raising as an economic
practice that was inseparable from “cattle culture,” a suite of ideas
and cultural practices that indirectly and directly valorize a cattle-
centric vision of rural society.
I also followed the trails of cattle across time and scales of mag-
nitude, from the fi rst cattle cultures in the Iberian Peninsula to the
consumption patterns and environmental concerns in the power cen-
ters of the world. I sought to capture the practices of social groups
in relation to these multiscalar structures, which were political and
economic, but also normative and symbolic—notions of what Ama-
zonia should look like and how its residents should behave in rela-
tion to nature. I compared the ways that groups with unique identi-
ties and histories—from rubber tappers and urban environmentalists
to cowboys and ranchers—engaged these structures from the stand-
points of their own particular class, ideology, and location.
After many interviews, varied surveys, and plenty of churrascos,
I came to perceive a mutually reinforcing system of positive signs
and practices that made cattle raising socially, economically, and cul-
turally more appealing than forest-based or agricultural livelihoods.
This cattle culture is reflected in boots and belt buckles, but I also
found that it is inextricable from core ideologies of nature and a com-
plex rural sociology that can only be understood in relation to the
city and the forest.

a trip through southwestern acre

My research began with me trying to re-envision the mighty Am-

azon region and Acre, Brazil, home of the forest-saving rubber tap-
pers—not as I thought or hoped it should be, but as a place in which
the cattle economy and cattle culture were increasingly apparent, but
largely unacknowledged, ignored, or written off. I focused initially on
what I saw: the museums, pastures, forest, contri bars, and slaughter-
houses. I then went inside these places in search of a deeper under-
standing, and was gradually able to link the material world that I saw
there with practices and meaning, each reflected in different ways in
different people. Chico Mendes is undoubtedly the face of Acre—per-
haps all of Amazonia—but here I reorient the focus to some of the
other images I came across. These include a “portrait of Acre” from

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 5 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 6 rainforest cowboys

a conflicted past, a pistoleiro with a fake cowboy hat, and a photo of

a cauboi tucked into the pages of a biology book. I begin this jour-
ney in Rio Branco, with a historical-official view, and then follow the
BR-317 highway through the pastures and out to the forest. I next re-
trace my steps to the city, this time with a eye on cattle culture.

The Cit y of the For est

Rio Branco, the “City of the Forest,” is both the capital and the larg-
est city of the state. The work of the Governo da Floresta (Forest Gov-
ernment), as the state government referred to itself until 2011, was
reflected in the built testaments to Acre’s forest heritage and forest
future, from the Arena da Floresta (Stadium of the Forest) on the Via
Chico Mendes to the sleek Museu da Floresta (Museum of the Forest).
These gleaming modern constructions initiated by the Forest Gov-
ernment rarely melded with the hodgepodge assortment of brightly
painted buildings and rambling streets that surrounded them.
Amid the teeming life of everyday Rio Branco, the past was pre-
served in cool, quiet places around town, where you could step out of
the dust and heat of the dry season. At the Museu da Borracha (Mu-
seum of Rubber) I walked through an exhibit with vivid descriptions
of Acrean history, beginning with Acre’s 1903 independence from Bo-
livia, attained with the help of the heroic rubber tappers. At the end
was a life-sized display of a rubber tapper rotating a ball of rubber
over a fi re, working to transform the liquid latex into Amazonia’s
“white gold.”
The fi rst wave of rubber tappers came to Acre from drought-
stricken northeastern Brazil with the onset of the “rubber boom” in
the mid-1800s. From 1870 through the mid-twentieth century, Acre
was one of Amazonia’s most productive rubber regions (Bakx 1988).
The rubber industry suffered a serious blow in the 1920s, after planta-
tions in Southeast Asia broke the Amazonian monopoly, using seeds
smuggled from the region (Dean 1987; Santos 1980). During World
War II, when U.S. rubber supplies from Asia were cut off, the industry
briefly rebounded, and a wave of “rubber soldiers” migrated to Ama-
zonia from the northeast to tap rubber for the Allied war effort (Mar-
tinello 2004).
The life of the tapper was a difficult one. Locked into a system
of debt-peonage, they were forced to exchange their rubber for essen-
tial goods with the seringalista, or rubber baron, who owned the land
that they worked (Resor 1977). Following World War II, the price of

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 the journey to acre 7

figure 1.3. “A portrait of Acre,” Varadouro

magazine, December 1979 issue. Photo taken by
author at the Museu da Borracha, Rio Branco, Acre.

rubber steadily declined, and the rubber barons fled the region, leav-
ing many rubber tappers as owners of the land that they had worked
(Bakx 1988:143).
In the 1970s the military government’s plans to colonize the Am-
azon brought tumultuous changes that interrupted the rubber-tapper
lifestyle depicted at the museum. The December 1979 issue of Vara-
douro magazine, which I found in the museum’s archive, attests to
some of the changes brought about by the arrival of migrants. In this
cover illustration by Acrean artist Helio Melo, a cow has taken over
the home of a rubber-tapper family, expelling them and leaving them
to search for another place to live (fig. 1.3). The rubber tree (recogniz-
able by the lines on its trunk), which sustained the rubber tapper, had
been chopped down to make room for cattle pasture. This image il-
lustrates the clash of cultures, as the forest-dwelling rubber tappers
are physically and culturally displaced by foreign migrants and their
cattle.
The sense of invasion was further reinforced at the Biblioteca da
Floresta (Library of the Forest), a recent construction by the Governo
da Floresta. In its entryway I was greeted by a dramatic wall display
entitled “O Acre Como um Pasto de Boi” (Acre as a Cattle Pasture). In
the fi rst photo, a military officer aims his binoculars toward the ho-
rizon—to the Amazonian frontier, then a sparsely populated land of
untapped resources and a potential security threat. Faced with unrest
in the populous southern regions of Brazil, the military government
opened the Amazon up to settlement by smallholders, landless pop-
ulations, and urban poor (Almeida 1992; Moran 1981; Smith 1982).
Entrepreneurs and ranchers from central-southern Brazil were also

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 8 rainforest cowboys

attracted by incentives and subsidies and worked to establish large-

scale cattle ranching operations (Hecht 1993).
In the next panel of the display is a map of Brazil with red veins
traversing Amazonia, to indicate the network of roads constructed
to facilitate migration into isolated regions. An overburdened logging
truck and a mottled Gyrolandia bull stare out from the map, sym-
bols of the predatory extractivist business model that developed on
Amazonia’s “contested frontiers,” where migrant groups from other
Brazilian states battled for land and resources with native Amazoni-
ans (Schmink and Wood 1992). In the foreground of the map, a man
with a machine gun stands behind a wooden fence denoting the en-
trance to a cattle ranch (fig. 1.4). The eyes of this pistoleiro are con-
cealed beneath a cowboy hat, which appears to have been overlain on
the original photo of the man. No doubt a creative way to conceal the
pistoleiro’s identity, the choice of a dark cowboy hat is appropriate
for the Acrean recasting of the frontier narrative, in which the forest-
dwelling rubber tappers banded together to defend their forest against
the villainous cattle ranchers.
Amid escalating violence in the late 1980s, the rubber tappers were
able to slow down the rate of rancher deforestation and appropriation
of tapper lands around the city of Xapuri, and moved toward securing
rights to their land. The cause was aided by the international acclaim
of Chico Mendes, who traveled abroad to speak of the rubber tappers’
struggle, and drew attention to the environmental destruction taking
place throughout Amazonia. Back in Acre, Mendes received death
threats from ranchers angered by the rubber tappers’ protests, which
were preventing them from taking control of lands that they claimed.
In the aftermath of Mendes’s murder, the movement attained an
even broader appeal, bringing international pressure to bear on the
Brazilian government (Keck 1995). The rubber-tapper movement
achieved one of its primary goals with the establishment of the ex-
tractive reserve (RESEX) system. This novel land-tenure model was
based on rubber-tapper patterns of resource use, in which they har-
vested products, such as rubber and Brazil nuts, from the standing
forest. They emphasized that in these reserves people could both use
the forest and contribute to its preservation (Schwartzman 1989). Fol-
lowing the establishment of the RESEX, similar use-based conserva-
tion units were instituted throughout Amazonia (Gomes 2009; Kai-
ner et al. 2003). The rubber tappers became a potent symbol in an
emerging global environmental movement (Tsing 2005).
All around Rio Branco and on signs along the BR-317 the same

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 the journey to acre 9

figure 1.4. Amazonian pistoleiro with cowboy hat. Photo taken by author of
display at the Biblioteca da Floresta, Rio Branco, Acre.

symbol was painted: a tree in a box, with “Governo da Floresta” writ-

ten underneath. From the Arena da Floresta to the Via Chico Mendes,
with its bike lanes and potted plants, on out to the Via Verde, a high-
way that now encircles the city, there have been vast urban infra-
structural improvements throughout Rio Branco over the past de-
cade, and many of them have the little tree symbol stamped on them.
The “forest government” was born in 1989, when Jorge Viana as-
sumed the governorship of Acre. Successive administrations built on

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 10 rainforest cowboys

the ideals of the rubber-tapper movement to promote forest-based de-

velopment “to demonstrate to present and future generations that
development does not depend on the destruction of the forest, but
rather on its survival” (Government of Acre 1999, quoted in Kainer
et al. 2003).
One of the forest government’s most popular projects was the con-
version of a swampy ditch running through the middle of Rio Branco
into a pleasant oasis known as the Parque da Maternidade. While I
was in Acre, lycra-clad women and men in sleeveless shirts walked
and talked in the evenings along its extensive network of paths.
Workers returned home from a day’s work on their bikes, toting gro-
ceries in red and white striped plastic bags balanced in back. They
passed the Museu da Floresta and the Museu dos Povos da Floresta
(Museum of Forest Peoples), and O Paço restaurant, with its bow-tied
waitstaff taking orders on electronic pads. Youths played soccer and
volleyball on numerous sand courts between the walking paths and
the canal. After an errant kick or pass, they argued about who would
retrieve the ball from the ankle-high black water that bisected the
park from its beginning until it crossed under the Avenida Ceará and
entered the market, where sellers hawked fruits, ice cream, stacks of
colorful synthetic clothing, and pirata cell phones.
At the far edge of the market, the black stream and the plastic bot-
tles that floated on its surface merged with the muddy waters of the
Acre River. It flowed to the Purus, Solimões, and Amazon Rivers be-
fore eventually emptying into the Atlantic Ocean some 3,000 kilo-
meters downstream. Upriver from the park, a futuristic white pedes-
trian bridge carried young environmentalists from the World Wildlife
Fund offices across the river to the newly renovated mercado velho
(old market), where they often sat sipping draft beer in the fading af-
ternoon sun.
As we follow it upstream, the Acre River meanders through the
upper Acre region, through Xapuri, down to Brasiléia on the Boliv-
ian border, and then on to Assis Brasil, before heading into Peru and
its source in the Andes. The recently paved (2002) BR-317 highway
roughly follows the river for some 330 kilometers through the up-
per Acre region (fig. 1.5). Completed under the Viana administra-
tion, the BR-317 forms part of the Inter-Oceanic Highway, which now
links Brazil with the Peruvian coast. This region of upper Acre, along
with lower Acre—which encircles Rio Branco and extends east to the
states of Amazonas and Rondônia—is the most heavily populated
and denuded part of the state.

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 the journey to acre 11

figure 1.5. Map of southern Acre

This west Amazonian region is also one of the most biodiverse

parts of the entire basin (Campbell and Hammond 1989; Daly and
Prance 1989). Clearings have revealed geoglyphs, huge geometrically
shaped earthworks that resemble streambeds from the road. These re-
cent archeological fi nds are forcing us to rethink what life was like
for ancient Amazonian societies (Pärssinen et al. 2009). Although it
was long thought of as a virgin wilderness, contemporary research-
ers now highlight the role of Amerindians in shaping this ecosystem
over the centuries (Balée 2006; Denevan 1992; Posey 1985) and the
continued interactions between humans and ecosystem (Campbell
2007; Phillips et al. 1994).

In the Ga ps
About 88 percent of Acre is still covered by forest, but I spent much of
my time in the other 12 percent, where humped, white Brahman cat-
tle grazed on either side of the BR-317. Elaborate gates framed the vast
seas of pasture belonging to the large cattle ranches of the fazendei-
ros (ranchers). The pastures were punctuated by red-orange veins run-
ning down hills and knee-high termite mounds. The entrances to the
ramais (unpaved side roads) were marked by the rusty soil that spilled
out and eventually faded into the blacktop, chronicling the journeys
of cattle trucks from colonist and rubber-tapper communities located
beyond the end of the road. The ramais ran through the baking pas-
tures of the colonists, many of their homesteads carpeted in stubbly
grass from the front door to the farthest fence. Past the settlement
project the forest thickened, the temperature dropped, and the road
disintegrated into little footpaths.

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 12 rainforest cowboys

Jatobá Rocha and his family lived down one of these paths. The
Rochas’ home sat amid fruit trees, surrounded by a two-hectare clear-
ing planted with cassava and beans and pasture for their one bull,
Tchoa. Foot trails radiated out from the homestead and through the
forest, connecting the family to the rubber and Brazil nut trees upon
which they and their rubber-tapper neighbors have historically de-
pended. Jatobá was naturally hesitant to adopt cattle when I fi rst met
him in 2007, but he took the plunge and bought Tchoa a year later.
From Jatoba’s house I could walk to the homes of others, and at
each one heard a similar story, about how the forest did not make eco-
nomic sense anymore. I saw firsthand just how useful cattle were for
the isolated, poor tappers—their milk provided a constant supply of
protein and they transported Brazil nuts and rubber to the side of the
road for pickup. In contrast to these forest products, cattle were use-
ful for their flexibility—they had no season and could be sold when
necessary. Despite the acknowledged advantages of cattle, it was hard
for the aged tappers to reconcile themselves to the growing pastures
of the seringal.
Some days I rose before the sun came up to tap rubber with the
families that I stayed with. Other days were spent fishing, hunting,
working the cattle, or weeding crops. After lunch we always rested.
On the long, hot afternoons of summer (dry season) we laid on the
cool wooden planks of the floor or sat slumped against a wall, swat-
ting away the ever-present cabas (small wasps) and asking questions
about each other’s lives. Airplanes often passed high above these lit-
tle clearings in the forest, and my hosts inevitably spoke up or broke
off our conversations to ask if I came here in one of those. They
would ask what it was like, point to the sky, and wonder, “Where is
that one going?” The planes were usually heading north or south, so
I responded with references to places that they had heard of but never
been to: the United States in the north or São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or
Argentina in the south.
In the silences that followed, my thoughts would drift back to my
flights into and around Brazil. On my fi rst flight, from Texas to São
Paulo, I passed over the Amazon at night during the dry season. It
was disorienting because the light of the stars outshone the black
abyss below. Glowing orange fires and nebula-like little cities occa-
sionally broke the darkness. My mind began to fill the void with the
Amazonian hyper-nature of tangled forest, watchful eyes, slithering,
and buzzing. When I later headed north for Acre during the daytime,

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 the journey to acre 13

land and sky were easily distinguishable, but the ground was again
monotonous, an uninterrupted mass of bumpy green carpet, with
glistening rivers curling through like drunken slug trails.
It was like the flyover that often began nature programs I had
seen in the United States, in which the overview sets the stage for
a look beneath the green. The camera zooms in through the canopy,
to a scene of exotic nature, imbued with mystery by the noises of
an unseen howler monkey and a lonely woodwind. “This mysteri-
ous region is fi nally giving up its secrets. In the past ten years, a new
species has been discovered on average every three days. But the Am-
azon is changing fast, threatening the animals and plants that have
evolved here for millions of years.” The flute whinnies and stops sud-
denly: “The race is on to learn more about this remarkable place be-
fore it is too late” (Wild Amazon, episode 1: “The Cradle of Life,” Na-
tional Geographic Channel).
On the plane ride to Acre that fi rst day I found that the clearings
in the forest got my attention. The pastures, roads, and cities—those
spaces with which I was familiar in the “developed” world—seemed
intrusive and out of place in a region that I had come to think of as the
ultimate expression of the vastness of nature. These places were of-
ten the focus of Amazonian research, defi ned by what they are not—
forest. The maps show an alarming red arc of deforestation along the
southern edge of Amazonia, and gray fishbone patterns mark the set-
tlement projects.
Once on the ground, I worked to leave that view behind me, along
with the lenses of a privileged environmentalism through which a
complex landscape is reduced to the green of standing forest and the
red of destruction, and its inhabitants made into either eco-villains
or forest guardians. The fi rst step for me was to change the questions,
and to ask why cattle made economic sense and what they meant to
people, instead of asking why the area was being deforested. I learned
that in the eyes of many residents of the region the forest was a ves-
tige of a bygone time and an obstacle to development. The red-ribbon
roads and geometric ranches—these represented “order and progress”
carved out of a no-man’s-land. I needed to view this landscape as a
near reverse-negative and to see these new gaps as meaningful and
important. They were created by people, individuals responding to
a configuration of political and economic structures and guided by
identities formed amid other ways of using the land and, sometimes,
aspirations for a better life.

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 14 rainforest cowboys

Cat tle Cu lt u r e: The Cauboi in the Biology Book

Brasiléia lies some 80 kilometers away from the seringal, and to get
there one must travel across the rubber trails, to the ramal, lined by
smallholder colonists, and then onto the BR-317 highway, rolling
alongside picturesque pastures where cowboys loll among the white
herds of the ranchers.
Maria Bahiana’s house was about halfway between Assis Brasil
and Brasiléia. She lived in one of the settlement projects opened by
the government in the 1980s. Everyone knew her and could point you
down the unassuming little dirt road, lined by barbed wire and buff-
ered by pasture, that led to her dwelling. She left her native Bahia
with her husband when she was still in her teens, and made various
stops along the opening frontiers. Like the other colonists in the set-
tlement project, she came to Amazonia to get some land and make a
life for herself. Shortly after arriving in Acre in 1980, her husband fell
from his oxcart and was crushed under the wheels. She went it alone
for almost thirty years, raising her sons and daughters and working
her long fi ngers into a twist of knots and knuckles. In 2009, follow-
ing the lead of many colonists and other rural people, Bahiana moved
to the city with her sons and grandson. She kept mementos of her life
tucked into the pages of an old middle school biology book. One night
she pulled all the pictures out to show me, and gazed upon a black-
and-white image of her deceased husband. Back when I first saw it,
this photo of her eldest son, Branco, and his family struck me as an
Amazonian take on American Gothic (fig. 1.6).
Here we see Branco, a cauboi, in his jeans, boots, and cowboy hat,
and his ex-wife, with a white lamb in her arms. We sense that some-
thing else is being invoked by this photo, beyond its associations with
earning a living, a driver of deforestation, or an economically ratio-
nal guy responding to government incentives. As Branco stands con-
fidently in the pasture, with cowboys and cattle in the background,
the photo presents a concrete view of cattle raising, but also a man’s
aspirations for a way of life that is culturally meaningful.
As he stands in the pasture, amid the sunshine, in his boots—can
we even say that Branco is in the Amazon? The forest is conspicu-
ously absent from the photo; imported pasture grasses, cattle, horses,
and the white lamb take center stage. His pose, his accoutrements,
and his surroundings evoke a sense of control of the natural world,

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 the journey to acre 15

figure 1.6. Branco, an Amazonian cauboi, and family. Photo by Maria Bahiana.

of the cowboy who labors to subdue nature through the establish-

ment and maintenance of “clean” pastures, the domestication of cat-
tle, and the consumption of their flesh. Each of these features of the
cowboy life is celebrated in Acre through cattle culture, with its con-
tri songs and fashion, rodeos, and churrascos. Branco provides an in-
troduction to the ways that I conceptualize both cattle raising and
cattle culture—by means of an expanded focus on not only the prac-
tice and the resultant landscapes, but also the ideologies that under-
gird the perception of these landscapes, and the practices and groups
that produce them.
The last time I saw Branco, he was competing in a rodeio at the
Raio da Lua (Moonbeam), a few kilometers from where he had grown
up with Bahiana. He was with other young caubois, also clad in cow-
boy hats, leather boots and vests, and shiny belt buckles. They were
attempting to ride bucking bulls in the hopes of winning a motor-
cycle. After the competition, I sat with the group on a low wooden
fence, and listened as they talked and compared bumps and bruises.
They devoured barbecued beef and boiled manioc root from plastic
plates balanced on their knees, hurriedly stuffing the last bits into
their mouths as the sertaneja or contri (I use these terms interchange-
ably to refer to contemporary Brazilian country music) cranked up,

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 16 rainforest cowboys

signaling the beginning of the dance. From this little speck of light
on the side of the highway, pulsating stereo speakers sent messages
about an idyllic rural life floating out over the dark forest.
Rio Branco lies some 300 kilometers southeast of the Raio da Lua.
Back on the BR-317 highway, we see cattle, with little white garças
(egrets) always following close behind, moving about in the green
pastures, rubbing themselves on the rough trunks of the Brazil nut
trees in the morning before ambling on to the green knee-high pas-
tures, which fade to brown in the dry summer months. These tow-
ering trees, many of them charred at the base and limbless after be-
ing burned by pasture fi res, throw long, thin shadows that shrink
and move from west to east as the day progresses. It is illegal to cut
down these now-sterile trees, according to the “Chico Mendes Law.”
The landscape reflects the destructive past chronicled in The World
Is Burning (Shoumatoff 1990) and The Burning Season (Revkin 1990).
Up the road in Capixaba, the highway passed the “Country Bar,”
with its painted sign of a woman in boots and a slim cowboy on a buck-
ing bull. Nearing Rio Branco, we saw a new rodeo arena and dance-
hall called the Celeiro Beer (Beer Barn), with a wagon wheel mounted
above the front door. Next to the Celeiro was a small store where I
stopped once with Olessio, a ranch foreman. He needed a new belt
buckle for the annual Expo-Acre celebration in Rio Branco. He chose
from a selection of silver belt buckles the size of elongated saucers.
They gleamed under a glass case next to smaller ones with pink ac-
cents for women, and tins of imported American smokeless tobacco.
As we approach Rio Branco, just off the Via Verde on the BR-364
(heading on to Rondonia and then to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo),
the foul smell and the black smoke announce the presence of the two
new slaughterhouses. This was where Acrean cattle ended their jour-
ney from the pastures of the rubber tappers, colonists, and ranchers
of southern Acre. In the pens outside of one of these slaughterhouses,
I looked down on the cattle as they stood about and occasionally jos-
tled for position, as misty water from a sprinkler cascaded over them.
They slowly filtered single file into a warehouse, where they were hit
over the head, strung up, split in half with a chainsaw, transformed
into Acre’s famed boi verde (green cattle), a beef marketed for its “nat-
ural” qualities. Nothing was wasted here, the manager told me, as he
motioned to the rendering machine, where bones were ground and
fat, sinew, and the rest were melted down and converted to ingredi-
ents for everything from toothpaste to gelatin.

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 the journey to acre 17

On the weekend, the smell of roasting meat was heavy in the

air, with churrascos serving as the centerpiece for social gatherings
of Acreans from all social classes. A churrasco without beef is not
acceptable to most, and, as one man told me, meatless meals “are
eaten with our eyes closed.” And Acreans do eat beef. Forty percent
of the beef produced in Acre stays within the borders of the state,
where it is consumed by Acreans, who have the highest rate of an-
nual beef consumption in all of Brazil (Valentim 2008). It seemed
that on almost every commercial block in every town there was ei-
ther a butcher shop or a churrascaria, a self-service restaurant featur-
ing roasted meat, as well as a pharmacy. Along with agricultural sup-
ply stores, these establishments were often decorated with scenes of
majestic white bulls grazing in a verdant, mountainous countryside
that called to mind a Swiss landscape. Inside a butcher shop in the
humble Sobral neighborhood, a painted white bull looked out over
a pasture bisected by a small stream, and down to a glass case with
chunks of ruby red meat on hooks. On the wall it said, “Deus é meu
pastor” (“The Lord is my shepherd”).
Sobral and other neighborhoods like it are full of old rubber tap-
pers. The city offered a better life to the ex-pioneers and the forests’
huddled masses, and they built their homes on the outskirts. As Bra-
zil emerges, those fueling urban production have access to goods be-
yond what they once imagined, but they also have rural roots, memo-
ries, or at least stories and songs of a purer time and place. In the fi rst
quiet slices of afternoon shade, saudade (longing, nostalgia) drifts
over the zinc roofs of the city, skips hurriedly past the forest, and set-
tles on a nice piece of land, maybe with a few head of cattle, in the
country.
If you drove around Rio Branco you would likely hear sertaneja
music down low in the restaurants, and louder in the contri bars,
where local singer Bobnei belted out sertaneja hits, along with Amer-
ican country songs “Chattahoochee” and “Jambalaya.” Sertaneja also
echoed from cars parked on the sidewalk, with young men sitting in
a circle and sipping tereré (cold herba maté tea), a tradition adapted
from the gaúchos some 4,000 kilometers to the south. You could have
stopped in at the recently opened “Cowboys Ranch” to buy new cow-
boy boots, hats, blue jeans, leather belts, or a shiny belt buckle.
At Bahamas, the most recent contri bar, patrons drank iced beer
from little steel buckets and watched a big-screen TV playing ro-
deo clips and bullfighting bloopers. The volume was turned off so

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 18 rainforest cowboys

that they could hear a man singing sertaneja covers. He passed the
microphone to members of the audience during the refrains of the
most popular tunes. The walls of Bahamas were painted with vari-
ous scenes that seemed to hearken back more to the American West
than to Brazil, with cowboys roaming desert landscapes beneath fi-
ery pink skies and tabletop mesas. The male and female bathrooms
were indicated by two cowboy-hatted silhouettes leaning against a
wall: one slim and muscular, the other buxom.

Th e Acr e a n l a n dsca pe illust r ates some of the myriad fea-

tures of the growing cattle industry. The signs all point to a collec-
tion of ideas and practices that indirectly and directly valorize cat-
tle raising. My task here is to follow the unseen threads and assemble
the pieces to build toward a more complete picture of cattle raising in
contemporary Amazonia.

bridging the gaps: ideological and

methodological considerations

In formulating a research project around this contentious topic, I en-

deavored to study cattle in a way that was grounded in a conceptual
and methodological framework that would make my fi ndings acces-
sible and convincing both to scholars and to those working on issues
of rural development and environmental preservation in Amazonia.
I drew on perspectives from political economy and political ecology;
practice theory; economic, ecological, symbolic, and cognitive an-
thropology; cultural geography; popular culture and literature; envi-
ronmental history; and research on cattle raising in the Americas and
East Africa.
As I discovered the layers, connections, and complexity involved
in understanding Acrean cattle, my methods naturally evolved and
expanded (see appendix B for details). I spent the fi rst three field sea-
sons attempting to capture the economic and cultural role of cattle
in the lives of rural rubber tappers, colonists, and large-scale ranch-
ers by conducting surveys and participant observation. I also inter-
viewed key government officials and representatives of environmen-
tal NGOs in the city, and watched the actions of people in places
where cattle were present in some form, including butcher shops,
rodeos, and churrascos. After three trips and a year of fieldwork, I
possessed comparisons of various social groups’ economic practices

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 the journey to acre 19

across time, life histories, key-informant interviews, and pages of

ethnographic description.
I returned home and started writing, and I found myself hanging
some pretty big generalizations on anecdotes, small samples, and pro-
vocative quotes. Fortunately, I was able to acquire funding for an-
other six months of research in Acre, and I had the time to plan out
how to obtain the data needed to make the study more comprehen-
sive. I focused on two very distinctive areas, one quantitative and the
other qualitative, to help me generate the overall picture that I was
aiming for.
I wanted to measure the extent to which different groups agreed
with certain statements that I had heard often. For example, did cow-
boys and environmentalists alike associate pastures with hard work
and intact forest with laziness? I thought that I understood each
group and their views, but I wanted to systematically compare their
responses to such questions, and to determine where the fault lines
and contradictions occurred across a broad cross-section of Acrean
society.
I created a survey of perceptions and activities that I thought to be
indicative of cattle culture, and when I went back to Acre, I adminis-
tered it to twenty members of six main social groups: rubber tappers,
colonists, ranchers, cowboys, urban policy makers, and decision mak-
ers and field technicians at socioenvironmental NGOs. These data
provided me with a body of empirical information within which to
systematically compare social groups and gauge the extent to which
cattle culture had been appropriated across a broad cross-section of
Acrean society (see appendix C for questions and results).
As I prepared for my return to the field later that year, I also
thought back to my initial impressions of the Amazon. I had learned
so much, but I never really took the time to explain it very well to my
friends and family in the United States, and I worried that in this I
was in some ways contributing to the region’s exoticism. We were al-
ways drawn back to the things they had seen on TV—the unbeliev-
able candiru (toothpick fish), the photos of the isolated Indian tribe in
Acre that swept across the Internet in 2007, and most frequently the
question, “Why are they cutting down the forest?”
I could not fault anyone, because my own questions were not that
different before I had the opportunity to learn more and do research
in the Amazon. I wanted to fi nd a way to share my research and show
the complexity of Amazonian life, and to demonstrate how Acreans

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 19 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 20 rainforest cowboys

were different, but also to reveal that they were in many ways con-
nected to and quite similar to the people of my hometown or any-
one else.
I gradually learned over the course of the research that a mixed-
methods approach is vital for understanding the full complexity of
contemporary socio-environmental topics, in the Amazonia and else-
where. I talked to the editors of my hometown newspaper, and we
agreed that I would send biweekly “Postcards from the Amazon”
from the field. In the pages that follow you will fi nd some of these
descriptive articles, quantitative data, and other observations derived
from more than a year and a half of fieldwork.

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 20 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 Ch a pter 2

the expansion of cattle raising in acre

Pr ior to 1975, less th a n 1 percen t of the Amazon region had

been deforested (Moran 1993). This number has grown to 14.5 per-
cent in recent years. The vast majority of the nearly seventy-five mil-
lion hectares of deforested lands now serve as cattle pastures (IBGE
2008). The initial expansion of cattle into the Brazilian Amazon in
the 1970s and 1980s was limited mostly to large-scale ranches in the
eastern Amazon states of Pará and Mato Grosso, and was the result
of land speculation and government credit and subsidies (Hecht 1993;
Mahar 1989; Schmink and Wood 1992). In areas of forest extractiv-
ism, such as the state of Acre, Brazil, rubber tappers fought against
the conversion of forest to cattle pasture.
Initially, raising cattle in Amazonia was profitable only because
it was propped up by generous government incentives and subsidies
(Hecht 1993). Although many of these subsidies and incentives have
since been discontinued, new ones have emerged, and cattle raising
has expanded throughout Amazonia. In 2004 Brazil emerged as the
leader in global beef exports. This growth was fueled not by activ-
ities in the traditional cattle-raising areas of the country, however,
but rather by Amazonian production, which increased at ten times
the rate of the rest of the country during the 1990s (Arima et al.
2006). The suppression of hoof-and-mouth disease and favorable agro-
climatic conditions have made the Amazon a prime haven for cat-
tle displaced from centralized production regions where land is more
expensive (Arima et al. 2006; Smeraldi and May 2008). By 2011, cat-
tle in the Amazon accounted for 38 percent of the total national beef
production.
Scholars understand the rise of Amazonian ranching to be the re-
sult of multiscalar political and economic factors that directly and

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 21 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 22 rainforest cowboys

indirectly contribute to the profitability of cattle raising (Arima et al.

2011; Barona et al. 2010; Margulis 2004; Moran 1993; Pacheco and
Poccard-Chapuis 2012; Walker et al. 2000; Walker et al. 2009). Con-
verting forest to pasture remains the most recognizable way of lay-
ing claim to land, gaining title to it, and increasing its value (Fearn-
side 2005; Hecht 1993). Regionally, expanding urban demand for beef
has become a primary driver of the Amazonian cattle industry (Fami-
now 1998).
On the household level, cattle raising offers many advantages over
other land uses, especially for poor, isolated groups. It is less risky, re-
quires less up-front investment, and is less labor intensive than agri-
culture (Durning and Brough 1991). Additionally, cattle are a liquid
asset that maintains value, and they are easily transported to market
(Margulis 2004).
From 1998 through 2008 Acre experienced the greatest percentage
increase in heads of cattle of all Brazilian states (IGBE 2010). Since
2005, improved enforcement of environmental controls has slowed
Amazon deforestation (Nepstad et al. 2009), especially among large
ranchers, but smallholders—including rubber tappers, who lack sup-
port for agricultural and forest extraction activities and face strict de-
forestation constraints—subsequently became the main drivers of
cattle expansion, as cattle raising became their only economically vi-
able livelihood (Toni et al. 2007). Governmental policy shifts have
thus—inadvertently—created a generalized tendency to adopt cat-
tle raising, even among groups previously unaccustomed to, or even
opposed to, cattle (Ehringhaus 2005; Gomes 2009; Salisbury and
Schmink 2007; Wallace 2004). Beneath these general trends, however,
there are important differences in the ways distinct groups now un-
derstand and practice cattle raising.
This brief review illustrates the political and economic orientation
of Amazonian cattle research. In this chapter I draw on this legacy
to examine how the economic practices of three different rural so-
cial groups in Acre have gradually shifted to cattle raising. I analyze
how groups were positioned within a political economy from 1970
to 1990, and how they have responded to structural changes in the
twenty years since 1990. In addition to the critical role of political
and economic factors, I emphasize the changing perceptions of cat-
tle and intergroup relationships over the past forty years. The broader
goal of this chapter is to put my research in conversation with the
dominant cattle paradigm, and then to build, chapter by chapter, a
better understanding of the complexity of Amazonian cattle raising.

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 22 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 cattle raising in acre 23

political ecology and cattle raising in acre

I now will draw on a comparative political ecology framework to

examine the ways that political and economic factors affect differ-
ent groups in unique ways across time and scale (Gezon and Paul-
son 2005). Political ecology builds on political economy to study the
role of power relations in human– environment interactions, as well
as the influence of capitalism on local systems and decisions (Bier-
sack 1999:10).
Local economic practices are structured by political economic fac-
tors, such as governmental development policies and market fluc-
tuations, which penetrate unequally at different levels and among
groups (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987). The structural factors create the
parameters, but do not determine the manner in which groups make
decisions and provisions for their household or the market (Chayanov
1986; Netting 1993). Perspectives from economic anthropology em-
phasize the importance of grounded cultural phenomena in mediat-
ing social group responses to macrostructural processes and changes
(Polanyi 1958; Sahlins 1972; Wilk and Cligget 2006).
Cattle engender strong cultural beliefs in settings throughout the
world (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Herskovits 1926; Harris 1966), and cat-
tle raisers are often accorded greater prestige than those without cat-
tle, from Africa (Schneider 1957; Spear 1993; Goldschmidt 1969) to
the Americas (Bennett 1969). By focusing on cattle in more recent
contexts, where broader connections are drawn out and constraints
emanate from multiscalar political projects and capitalist markets,
we gain a window into the ways that cattle raisers negotiate chang-
ing political economic structures and evolving meanings (Coma-
roff and Comaroff 1990; Ferguson 1985; Hutchinson 1996; Sheridan
2007). In summary, my framework recognizes that several factors—
political and economic structures, cultural factors, including on-the-
ground identities and circulating ideas of the meaning of cattle, and
social relationships between groups—may affect economic practices.

acrean social groups and research area

Settlement projects constitute 1,955,870 hectares, or 11.9 percent of

Acrean territory. Located between the CMER and the BR-317 high-
way is the massive Quixadá Projeto de Assentamento Dirigido (PAD),
or Directed Settlement Project (DSP), where I conducted most of my
research with colonists. It covers 76,741 hectares and is home to an

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 23 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 24 rainforest cowboys

figure 2.1. Satellite image of research area. Adapted from Luzar 2006 (41).

estimated 998 families (Governo do Acre 2006:116). Quixadá is criss-

crossed by side roads extending up to thirty kilometers to the north
of the BR-317 and to the south as far as the Acre River, which is the
border with Bolivia. Households and landholdings are generally lo-
cated along these side roads. Landholdings are not based on resource
distribution, as was the case for the tappers, but rather were drawn by
governmental officials, who settled the colonists here. The average
size of colonist landholdings was around eighty hectares.
Rubber-tapper households in this sample owned about 300 hectares
of land. They lived in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (CMER),
a sustainable-use conservation unit covering 5.66 percent of the state,
with conservation units totaling 45 percent (Governo do Acre 2006:
103) (see Appendix A for more information on my research area).
None of the ranchers that I interviewed live on their ranches. They
are based out of Rio Branco, and the majority of them own ranches
in upper Acre, although some had ranches in the neighboring mu-
nicipalities of lower Acre. A rancher, as defi ned in this study, owns
approximately five thousand head of cattle and five thousand hect-
ares of land; this total can come from one landholding or multi-
ple ranches. According to figures presented by Toni and colleagues,
there are eight private properties with between one and ten thousand
hectares of land in the municipality of Assis Brasil, and nineteen in
Brasiléia (2007:42). As previously mentioned, rancher interviews were
conducted throughout the state, but these statistics, along with fig-
ure 2.1, will serve to illustrate the distribution of social groups and
landholdings in the primary research area.

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 24 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 cattle raising in acre 25

Figure 2.1 shows the general location of the research sites and
identifies the administrative units where research was conducted.
The area indicated by the number 3 is a ranch that was not included
in my survey. I have indicated its position here to illustrate the scale
of a ranch and to show how the different land-tenure systems are sit-
uated in relation to one another. The side roads of the settlement proj-
ects and colonists’ property lines are visible around the areas marked
with the number 2. The RESEX (3) begins at the end of the side roads
to the north. The primary line extending from right, in the city of
Brasiléia (4), to left and then angling down is the BR-317 highway.

social groups, economic practices,

and tenure systems before 1990

The fi rst colonists arrived to take part in some of the nationally spon-
sored agricultural settlement projects implemented throughout the
country in the 1970s and 1980s. They were directed by INCRA, the
Brazilian Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, which set-
tled families from overcrowded and impoverished parts of the coun-
try in the sparsely populated Amazon region. These migrants were
expected to convert forest to agricultural plots and grow produce for
their own subsistence as well as for the market (Moran 1981; Smith
1982). Acrean colonist families reported that demonstrating “prog-
ress” through forest conversion was essential to maintaining their
land in these early years.
The Brazilian government also supported the establishment of
large-scale cattle ranches by offering generous fiscal incentives, at-
tracting entrepreneurs from other parts of Brazil (Hecht 1993). The
Acrean state, at that time headed by Governor Wanderley Dantas
(1971–1975), courted investors from the south, and facilitated the sale
of the vast rubber estates to the ranchers (Bakx 1988). Migrants, many
from landowning classes in Minas Gerais and São Paulo, were drawn
to the new frontier in Acre, where they could acquire cheap land and
subsidies for cattle ranching.
Prior to 1990, these social groups were dedicated to distinct
forms of exploiting their environment to fulfill their subsistence
and economic needs: rubber tappers relied mostly on the collection
of forest products (rubber and Brazil nut); colonists dedicated them-
selves largely to agricultural pursuits; and large-scale ranchers raised
cattle.
The arrival of migrants in the form of affluent ranchers and colo-

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 25 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 26 rainforest cowboys

nists hungry for land resulted in clashes with the native rubber tap-
pers, who were already scattered over much of southwestern Acre.
Rancher legal rights, backed by the government policy of the time,
were superimposed on tapper use rights. When ranchers sought to
claim the land that they had purchased, and convert the forests to
pastures, there was intergroup conflict (Ehringhaus 2005:5). The
RESEX established in 1990 after rubber-tapper mobilization and pro-
test served to institutionalize territorial and use rights for the rubber
tappers as these related to their traditional economic practice of for-
est extractivism (Kainer et al. 2003; Schwartzman 1989).
From 1970 to 1990 different groups with different practices came
together and came into conflict in Acre. During the process of open-
ing the Amazon during the 1970s and 1980s, three different types
of land-tenure systems were created to accommodate these distinct
social groups and their specific economic practices. These systems
established culturally distinct group boundaries and economic prac-
tices for rubber tappers, agricultural colonists, and large-scale ranch-
ers, which were reinforced through governmental support for extrac-
tivism, agriculture, and cattle raising. With this focus on specific
economic practices and political objectives, social groups became
linked to distinct identities, practices, and spaces.
Until the 1990s cattle were essentially the domain of large-scale
ranchers in Acre. Lack of technical knowledge and capital limited
their adoption by smallholder colonists and rubber tappers, who also
disdained cattle for their role in social conflict and environmental
destruction (Bakx 1988; Toni et al. 2007). In the last twenty years,
however, all groups’ tenure systems have become more restrictive be-
cause of environmental laws, while their practices have continued
to respond to evolving political, economic, and cultural cues. On the
surface, the actions of colonists and especially of rubber tappers can
be understood as diverging from their land-use practices and identi-
ties. The notion of unified group practice based on shared identity
and the institutional rules of tenure systems occludes the fact that
groups have always adapted to structural constraints within cultural
guidelines, which are also subject to change.
The assumed unity of practice–perception–tenure also betrays the
fact that the groups live side by side, interacting with and influenc-
ing one another. The essential function of cattle in the production
system of each group can be distilled to the following: rubber tappers
value cattle for their liquidity and view the animals as a savings ac-

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 26 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 cattle raising in acre 27

count; colonists view cattle as their last option as a result of defores-

tation regulations that inhibit agriculture; and ranchers continue to
raise cattle on a large scale for the beef market. Although groups use
and think about cattle differently, their common participation in the
cattle economy facilitates exchange and cooperation between them.
Given these factors, I seek to answer the following questions:

(1) What political and economic factors have made cattle raising a
more viable economic practice than agriculture and extractivism?
(2) How do different social groups in Acre now view cattle?
(3) Once a vehicle of confl ict, how do cattle now mediate intergroup
cultural and economic exchanges?

cattle expansion in acre since 1990

Neoliber a l a n d En v ironmen ta l Policies
Over the last twenty years, different social groups in Amazonia have
been heavily affected by political and economic factors that are the
consequences of neoliberal and environmental policies. There has
been a pronounced decline in governmental support for rural family
production, as evidenced by decreased support of agricultural liveli-
hoods and the removal of subsidies for rubber (Salisbury and Schmink
2007; Toni et al. 2007). In addition to government investment in
roads, these actions can be understood as part of a broader neoliberal
agenda pursued by the Brazilian government (Perz et al. 2010; Perz
et al. 2011). Environmental policies have also played a role in chang-
ing the practices of rural groups. Strict enforcement of deforesta-
tion and burning regulations in Acre, beginning around 2000 with
Acre’s “forest government,” has also seriously impeded rural live-
lihood strategies. Each of these interventions has produced unique
and unexpected effects, but collectively they have made the pre-1990
economic practices of extractivism and agriculture less competitive
with cattle raising, and in some cases impossible.
Shortly after the establishment of the CMER RESEX, the govern-
ment discontinued the subsidy that had propped up rubber prices for
decades, undermining the viability of extractivist livelihoods. The
removal of the rubber subsidy was the final straw for many extractiv-
ist families in Acre (Salisbury and Schmink 2007).
Families in São Cristovão reported that it was during the 1990s
that Brazil nut became their primary source of income, replacing

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 27 11/30/14 8:10 PM

 28 rainforest cowboys

figure 2.2. Rubber-tapper children ride their bull home from school

rubber, and cattle began to enter the picture as a strategy for storing
wealth (fig. 2.2). Cattle spread throughout the RESEX, particularly in
households bordering settlement projects and ranches (Gomes 2009).
Some families in the RESEX were threatened with expulsion for
exceeding deforestation limits to raise cattle. In the words of A Tri-
buna (2008), an Acrean newspaper: “The [RESEX] was born from the
dreams of the rubber tappers to be protected from cattle raising. This
same activity [cattle raising] has now returned to threaten them.”
This press account and others like it imply that raising cattle in the
RESEX is a violation in and of itself; this is not the case as long as de-
forestation limits are observed. More than any other group, the rub-
ber tappers feel the tensions of an evolving political economy that
renders their traditional economic practices less viable than cattle
raising, and they struggle to reconcile their cultural values with the
material needs of their households.
There is also a disconnection between the colonists’ traditional
and current economic practices, but colonists, especially migrants
from other regions, never had an ideological opposition to cattle. Col-
onists reported that up through the 1980s there was governmental
support and markets for their agricultural goods, but after 1990 this
was no longer the case. For most products, such as rice and corn, the

Hoelle_5339-final.indb 28 11/30/14 8:10 PM

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 [256]Ib., p. 165.
[257]“Modern Abyssinia,” p. 224.
[258]Compare, e.g., his remark on p. 223, “They have any
amount of pluck,” with Parkyns’s comments quoted on p. 24 of
this book.
[259]E.g. p. 222.
[260]Ib., p. 216.
[261]Eyre and Spottiswoode.
[262]Cf. p. 308.
[263]Mr. Wylde describes the Ras as “by far the cleverest and
most enlightened man that the country possesses.” He is a
possible successor to the Abyssinian throne.
[264]Colonel Rochfort’s Report.
 APPENDIX

Abyssinia is a deeply interesting country from the point of view of

geographical distribution, and it is much to be regretted that Dr. A. J.
Hayes did not have the opportunity of collecting insects on a large
scale. The animals of the southern half of Arabia are Ethiopian in
character; but in the Abyssinian mountains we may expect to find,
and we do find, a certain amount of Oriental affinity.
The valuable little collection of insects made by Dr. Hayes has
been presented by him to the Hope Department of the Oxford
University Museum, where the specimens can be seen and studied
by every naturalist interested in the great problems of distribution.
The attention of the donor was directed to the Oxford Museum by Mr.
W. L. S. Loat, who has himself contributed a large amount of
valuable material. Dr. Hayes’ collection was made, in February 1903,
in the vicinity of Lake Tsana, at a height of about 6500 feet. A
complete list is furnished below. Dr. Dixey has kindly determined and
made remarks upon the Pierinae.

LEPIDOPTERA.
NYMPHALIDAE.
Danainae: Limnas chrysippus (Linn.) ♀. The ground
colour of the pale tint characteristic of
1
Oriental specimens and usually replaced by
a much darker shade in African.
Danainae: L. chrysippus (Linn.) var. alcippus (Cram.) ♂♂.
2
Typical.
Nymphalinae: 1 Neptis agatha (Cram.).
1 Precis cebrene (Trim.).
PAPILIONIDAE.
Pierinae: 1 Catopsilia florella (Fabr.) ♂.
2 Colias electra (Linn.) ♂ ♀.
Terias brigitta (Cram.) ♂ ♂ ♀.
3
Dry season forms; not extreme.
3 Eronia leda (Boisd.) ♂ ♀ ♀.
One of these females has an orange apical
patch on the forewing, almost as distinct as
that of the male.
1 Pinacopteryx sp. ?
A female, rather worn; simulating Mylothris
agathina ♀.
Probably a new species, but being in poor
condition and a single specimen it would not
be advisable to describe it.
1 Belenois severina (Cram.) ♀. Dry season form.
1 Phrissura sp. ♂.
A male, of the P. sylvia group. This form of
Phrissura has not previously been recorded
from any part of East Africa.
Papilioninae: 8 Papilio demodocus (Esp.).

HYMENOPTERA.
1 Dorylus fimbriatus (Shuck.) ♂.

COLEOPTERA.
LAMELLICORNIA.
Scarabaeidae: Oniticellus inaequalis (Reiche).
1
Only known from Abyssinia.
Cetoniidae: 1 Pachnoda abyssinica (Blanch.).
1 Pachnoda stehelini (Schaum).
 Both Abyssinian species.
PHYTOPHAGA.
Cassididae: 1 Aspidomorpha punctata (Fab.).
HETEROMERA.
Cantharidae: 2 Mylabris, probably a new species.

NEUROPTERA.
1 Nemoptera, probably a new species.

ORTHOPTERA.
Acridiidae: 1 Cyrtacanthacris
sp.
1 Phymateus brunneri? (Bolivar).
1 Phymateus leprosus (Fab.).
1 Petasia anchoreta (Bolivar).
Mantidae: 1 Sphodromantis bioculata (Burm.).
1 Chiropus aestuans? (Sauss.).
In addition to the above, Dr. Hayes presented three insects
captured by him at Gedaref in the Soudan, including a pair of a
magnificent new species of Buprestid beetle of the genus
Sternocera, taken in coitu. This species has recently been described,
from Dr. Hayes’ specimen and two others in the British Museum, by
Mr. C. O. Waterhouse, who has given it the name Sternocera druryi
(“Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.” Oct., 1904, p. 247). The third insect is an
example of a Cantharid beetle, which does great damage to the
crops at Gadarif. Its determination as Mylabris hybrida (Bohem.) is
therefore a matter of some importance.

THE END

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

 THE
ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN

By permission of the Egyptian London: Smith, Elder Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt.,

Government. & Co. London.

(Large-size)
 LAKE TSANA

By permission of the London: Stanford’s

Egyptian Smith, Elder Geogl. Estabt.,
Government. & Co. London.

(Large-size)
 Transcriber's note:

pg 70 (footnote 41) Changed: Abyssinnia and its people to: Abyssinia

pg 91-92 (footnote 61) Changed: equitidœ to: equitidæ
pg 91-92 (footnote 61) Changed: nectariniœ to: nectariniæ
pg 96 Changed: plently of fish to: plenty
pg 271 Changed: been complied by to: compiled
pg 293 Changed: general langour to: languor
pg 311 (footnote 262) Changed: Cp. to: Cf.
Minor punctuation changes have been done silently.
Spelling inconsistencies have been left unchanged.
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